BASS

Fighting for your fishing rights.

Now seems like a good opportunity to lay out some of the many things we are working on that benefit sea angling. If you want to know more, register for free to receive our newsletters by visiting anglingtrust.net/subscribe.

BASS BATTLE

The pressure applied to get a fair crack of the whip for recreational anglers resulted in the EU Council of Ministers agreeing to look again at the evidence this spring, when a benchmarking exercise has been completed.

Hopefully, it will show that anglers are having a much smaller impact on bass, and a bag limit will be reinstated for the second half of 2018. We will be holding the scientists to account.

We are also working to raise awareness among the public, retailers and catering industry about the ban on landing bass in February and March – any wild bass being sold during these months in the UK is likely to have been landed illegally, so don’t buy or sell it.

BLUEFIN BREAKTHROUGH

After months of pressure, we hear that 2018 will see the start of a project tagging bluefin tuna in the South West. We will ensure anglers are involved in the tagging. We’ll bring you more news when the project is launched.

WRASSE

The Angling Trust led the way in putting the use of wrasse as ‘cleaner fish’ on the agenda, when it became clear thousands of South Coast fish were being taken to Scotland to peck sea lice off farmed salmon.

We called for an immediate closure of commercial wrasse fisheries until someone could tell us if it was sustainable, and its impact on the reef ecosystems and the angling industry in the South West. This didn’t happen. Now Fish Legal is considering a Judicial Review of the Government’s failure to assess the impact on protected reefs.

BREXIT

Much depends on what is in the forthcoming UK Fisheries Bill, but we are working hard to ensure you have a voice and that leaving the EU brings benefits to UK fish stocks and UK angling.